Nick Oldham - Dead Heat

Henry wondered how FB had broken the news to the grieving families, but then he knew: FB would have done it well. As well as it could have been done. As brusque, unpleasant and politically incorrect as he was when he knew he could get away with it, he could be the caring, professional cop when he had to be. He was a master at playing the game to his advantage, otherwise he would never have made it to Chief. Henry knew FB was no fool.

‘Anything on the weapon that killed the officers?’ Henry asked. He knew it had been quickly established that their own weapons had not been used against them.

‘.22 calibre bullets, nothing more yet,’ Jane said.

‘I do have a thought about that — and that’s the second thing,’ Donaldson said. He pondered for a moment. ‘I might be wrong, but I think I know how he might have let your lads keep a gun on him.’

Henry picked up on this immediately. ‘Something that was a gun, but didn’t look like one?’

‘Right! I’ll bet they thought he had a mobile phone on him.’

‘You’re kidding,’ FB exclaimed, stopping just short of his mouth with a forkful of food.

‘It’ll be something like that,’ Donaldson said. ‘French cops seized two mobile phones earlier this year, except they weren’t, they were guns capable of firing four bullets. The digital touch pads are used as triggers. They look pretty much identical to normal cell phones on the outside, but they come apart in the middle to reveal a four-chamber secret compartment for.22 calibre bullets which are shot out of the end. Lethal up to about ten metres. They were found during a raid on a gangster’s house in Rouen, a gangster who, incidentally, is connected to Mendoza. They’re made in Eastern Europe and actually surfaced in Belgium in 2001.’

The information did not stop FB from eating.

‘But it’s only a theory,’ Donaldson said. ‘We may never know.’

Silence descended on the table whilst FB digested his breakfast and the other two digested the news.

Henry exhaled. His coffee cup was empty. ‘Are you buying more drinks, boss?’

‘Jane — refills,’ FB ordered the DI. ‘There’s a love.’

Henry saw her reaction. Red spread from her neck upwards. She visibly bristled. Henry waited to see if she would say anything. He knew she would. She leaned on the table to FB. ‘Don’t ever call me “love” again — sir — or you might regret it.’ She pushed herself up. ‘Coffees all round?’ she enquired pleasantly.

Henry closed his eyes momentarily and thought about the complexity of the relationships around the table. Him and FB; FB and Donaldson; Jane and FB; him and Donaldson; him and Jane. It made him weary. Maybe he could do without this, wherever ‘this’ was going. Maybe he would just go home and be suspended. Accept whatever came his way, then coast up to retirement in some backwater job, like Best Value or something.

But that wasn’t him at all. He might think it, but he couldn’t do it.

‘Where do I come into this?’ he found himself asking.

Jane returned with four mugs of milky coffee. Henry scraped the skin off his with the handle of his fork, then took a sip. It was hot and slightly sweet, reminding him of the coffee he used to drink as a youngster. This cafe was the only place he knew could recreate it and for a moment he was back with his mother in their little house in a hilltop village in East Lancashire where he had been born and bred and brought up until he was ten. His mother was now dead, had been for about eight years. Suddenly and unexpectedly, he missed her. Milky coffee had been her speciality.

He shook himself out of that fast, wondering where it had come from. He had not thought about his mother for a long time and felt guilty.

‘You OK, Henry?’ Donaldson said, noticing his friend’s momentarily spaced-out behaviour.

‘Yeah, sorta deja-vu for a split second.’

FB sat back, replete, and slapped his tummy. He had certainly put on weight since gravitating into the highest echelons of the police service. Too much money, too much good living. He reminded Henry of a Pot-bellied Pig. ‘Where do you come into this?’ he echoed Henry’s question. ‘Let me lay this on the line, Henry. I actually don’t want you involved in this in any way. You’re suspended and it makes things very complicated if you get involved in anything to do with police work. There is no precedent for it.’

‘What am I doing here, then?’

FB’s eyes narrowed to slits. He looked sideways and distastefully at Donaldson. ‘We are under some pressure to solve the Marty Cragg murder. It’s been going on for too long and yes, that is a criticism of the SIO team. In my books they should have got it bottomed by now.’

Easier said than done, Henry thought, especially given the complexity of the job. People like Mendoza and professional hit men are not easy people to bring to justice.

‘The investigation is under strain,’ FB reiterated, ‘and the Home Office and the Police Authority have revealed their disquiet.’

‘And my bosses want progress too,’ Donaldson said. ‘Mendoza has killed two of our guys now. We want him, as you might say quaintly, “fettling”. We are keen to pursue any line we can. The Wickson connection has only just come to light and by pure chance you’re already involved in the family for another reason.

‘We would like you to stay in there, purely from the point of view of information and intelligence-gathering, nothing else. Mrs Wickson invited you in to dig around on some horse mutilation that’s been going on at the stables — which could be connected — so we want you to carry on with that, get as close into the family as you can and see what dirt lies under the rock that hides the Wicksons — and get a direct line to Mendoza, if poss.’

‘But I’m suspended. I have no police powers,’ Henry persisted.

‘Like I said, there’s no precedent for this,’ FB said. ‘So yes, you would be acting purely as a civilian, nothing more.’

‘No back-up? No resources?’

‘Nowt.’

Henry shot a hard glance at Jane, then Karl Donaldson. ‘Do you support this, Karl?’

‘It was his fucking idea,’ FB blurted, almost choking. ‘He seems to think you might do a good job. And, may I remind you, you might be suspended from duty, but you are on full pay.’

‘And you think that obliges me to do this for you?’

FB nodded. Yes, he did.

Henry’s mind clicked and whirred. He did want to get involved, but it had to be on his terms with his own safeguards in place.

‘What’s in it for me?’ he said and held eye contact with FB.

‘Do you know, I couldn’t fucking believe my eyes.’ FB and Henry were on the beach close to the White Cafe. The other two were sat on a picnic bench outside the cafe whilst Henry and the Chief strolled side by side in the sand. ‘On my first day I decide to start off in the control room and the first thing I see is the helicopter download of you being bloody hijacked.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I didn’t know about your suspension then. Can’t say I’m surprised though. You sail close to the wind. . but this lack of judgement thing. .? Disobeying a lawful order?’ FB shook his head in disbelief as though he could not get his thoughts round it. ‘A witness shot and severely injured, a cop shot too?’

‘Neither have died.’

‘Hardly the point, Henry.’

‘True, but I’m not to blame for it happening. I went through the correct procedure to get a firearms operation authorized and it got kicked out. . I still had a vulnerable witness on my hands who needed moving urgently.’

‘I reviewed the case last night.’ FB stopped, picked up a flat pebble and skimmed it across the surface of a large rock pool. ‘You never went through the correct procedure at all, just went ahead off your own bat and it went pear-shaped. You’re a loose cannon, always have been, Henry, and now you’re about to get your comeuppance.’